Custom-built coffee.
Sublime Coffee Roasters is a family-owned roastery in Nelson (Whakatū), New Zealand, making custom-built coffee since 2005. We’re the coffee lovers who built our own roaster, so we could hold our blends steady, batch after batch. The beans change with every harvest; the cup doesn’t. Serious about coffee. Not serious about snobs.
We’re based in Nelson, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. Our roastery and brew bar sit at Bridge St Studios in the heart of the Nelson CBD, alongside a creative community of makers and independent businesses, and you’ll also find us at our Haven Road café. We’ve been roasting in Nelson since 2005.
We built our own roaster, and we built it to make our coffee taste the same every time. Harvests shift and beans vary from season to season, so we rebuild each blend from what’s good until it lands exactly where it always has. The reference isn’t a spec sheet; it’s twenty years of knowing what it should taste like. That’s the craft, and it means there’s nothing for you to do but enjoy it.
Custom Deluxe is our hero blend, the one Dan and Emma have drunk every morning for twenty years. It’s smooth and chocolatey with a nutty, honeyed finish: easy-drinking black, even better with milk. It has tasted like that for two decades, through every harvest change along the way. If you’re not sure where to start, start here.
You can buy Sublime online, in our Nelson cafés and on supermarket shelves. Order direct from our website as a one-off or a subscription, grab a bag at selected supermarkets, or pull up at Haven Road or Bridge St Studios. More than 100 cafés around New Zealand also pour Sublime. Same coffee, wherever you find it.
A coffee blend is two or more coffees combined to make one consistent flavour. Each part brings something: body, sweetness, chocolate, a bit of lift. Together they make a cup that tastes the way it’s meant to, every time. Because crops change from harvest to harvest, a good blend gets rebuilt whenever the beans underneath it move. You notice nothing, which is exactly the point.
Neither is better. They’re built for different jobs. A single origin shows off one place, and it changes as that place’s harvest changes, which is half the fun. A blend is built so the flavour holds steady whatever’s happening at the farm. We put our craft into blends, because a great cup every morning shouldn’t depend on the season. Origin is where the coffee comes from. The flavour is where the reward is.
Tell us. We genuinely want to know. Our whole job is making sure Sublime tastes the same every time, so a change is ours to sort, not yours to fix. Sometimes it’s something simple, like a bag that’s been open a while; sometimes it’s at our end. Either way, get in touch and we’ll make it right.
Freshly roasted means the coffee was roasted recently and moved on quickly, so it reaches you with its aroma and flavour intact. We batch roast in small runs at our Nelson roastery and send it out soon after, whether it’s heading to your door, a café or a supermarket shelf. The best before date on every bag shows the window we stand behind.
Unopened, your coffee is at its best up to the best before date on the bag. Once it’s open, aim to finish it within a few weeks. Whole beans hold their flavour a little longer than ground. Keep the bag sealed between cups and the last one will taste nearly as good as the first.
Store coffee in its bag, rolled down tight, or in an airtight container somewhere cool, dark and dry. Keep it away from the sunny bench, the oven and the fridge. Air, light, heat and moisture are what dull good coffee. That’s it. No special kit required.
Buy whichever suits your kitchen. Both make a great cup of Sublime. If you’ve got a grinder, whole beans hold their flavour a little longer once the bag’s open. If you don’t, ground is the easy option: tell us how you brew and we’ll grind it to suit, so it’s ready to go.
Good decaf is genuinely good, and ours is. It comes down to how the caffeine comes out: we use the sugar cane all natural process to remove caffeine while preserving the coffee’s flavour. It’s a proper, full-flavoured cup for people who want less caffeine without giving up their coffee ritual.
Sugar cane is an all natural decaffeination process. It removes caffeine while preserving the coffee’s flavour. That’s why our decaf tastes like coffee rather than a compromise.
Yes. Decaf still contains a small amount of caffeine, and the amount varies with the coffee, serving size and brewing method. If you need to limit caffeine for a medical reason, ask your health professional what suits you.
Caffeine affects everyone differently, so there’s no guarantee an afternoon coffee won’t affect your sleep. Decaf or a lower-caffeine option may suit you better later in the day, but even decaf contains some caffeine. Choose what works for you and seek health advice if sleep remains a concern.
Add coarse-ground coffee, pour in hot (not boiling) water, give it a gentle stir, pop the lid on and wait about two minutes before pressing slowly. That’s the whole method, and it’s how we make it ourselves. No scales, no timer app: the blend is built to land the same way every time, so the plunger just has to get out of its way.
About 60g of coffee per litre of water is a good place to start. Like it stronger, add a bit more; lighter, a bit less. That’s as technical as it needs to get: the flavour is already built into the blend, so you’re just choosing how much of it you want.
Use medium-ground coffee, pour a splash of hot water over it and let it sit for about thirty seconds (baristas call this the bloom), then pour the rest in slowly, a bit at a time. All up, it takes around three minutes. You don’t need a gooseneck kettle or a set of scales for a clean, smooth cup. The work’s already been done at the roastery.
Coarse for a plunger, medium for filter and pour-over, fine for espresso. The rule of thumb: the longer the water sits with the coffee, the coarser the grind. Or skip the question altogether: tell us how you brew when you order and we’ll grind it for you.
We buy green (unroasted) beans from quality-focused growers around the coffee world, chosen for one thing: flavour. Harvests shift every season, so we rebuild our blends from what’s good until each one tastes exactly how it always has. Our range includes Fair Trade and single-origin options, all expertly sourced for flavour and roasted in Nelson.
We source through long-term relationships rather than chasing the lowest price, and we offer Fair Trade options. Sourcing well and treating people fairly is a standard we hold, and has been from the start. We’d rather show you the work than make big claims about it.
Our bags aren’t compostable yet. We’re reviewing our packaging, including compostable options, and we’ll share the details once a change is made. Until then, we’d rather tell you exactly where things stand than overstate it.
We work hard so your mornings don’t.